Evidence for puberty blockers use very low, says NICE – BBC News

The evidence for using puberty blocking drugs to treat young people struggling with their gender identity is “very low”, an official review has found.The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said existing studies of the drugs were small and “subject to bias and confounding”.

The assessment of the evidence into the drugs was commissioned by NHS England.

NICE also reviewed the evidence base for gender-affirming hormones – sometimes known as cross-sex hormones.

The review found the evidence of clinical effectiveness and safety of gender-affirming hormones was also of “very low” quality.

“Any potential benefits of gender-affirming hormones must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria,” NICE said.

Source: Evidence for puberty blockers use very low, says NICE – BBC News

Stop the contagion of violence against women

What would happen if governments approached the other pandemic in our midst – violence against women – with the same level of urgency and leadership?

Violence against women and girls is the most widespread human rights violation in Australia and the world, with approximately one in four having experienced physical and/or sexualised violence by an intimate partner. The most common characteristic shared by survivors is their gender, and people who perpetrate are predominantly male.

Children and young people are frequently overlooked but suffer greatly, with one child a fortnight dying in the context of domestic and family violence (DFV). Many first experience abuse in utero: 1 in 4 women who experience DFV are abused for the first time when pregnant. Stopping the contagion requires that the impact on children is identified and responded to early. Many women separate from abusive partners to protect children, only to find that their children are exposed to unsupervised time with ex-partners who often continue the pattern of abuse, through their child.

Source: Stop the contagion of violence against women

Australia Post: The key moments from Christine Holgate’s Senate inquiry

Former Australia Post boss Christine Holgate’s appearance at the Senate inquiry on Tuesday was nothing short of explosive.

Ms Holgate claims she was unlawfully stood down by the chairman of Australia Post, after the PM told Parliament last year if she refused to stand aside during an investigation into the watches “then she can go”.

Ms Holgate defended her choice of gifts, arguing it was not out of the ordinary for a CEO to give gifts or bonuses to executives who had worked hard. 

She argued she was being treated differently because of her gender. She pointed to “five-star luxury jaunts” to the 2012 Olympics, doled out by her predecessor, as an example of executive spending that was left uncriticised.

Ms Holgate said she also believed she “wasn’t popular” with Mr Di Bartolomeo and ministers because she opposed a confidential business strategy review conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, which argued Australia Post should be privatised. 

Source: Australia Post: The key moments from Christine Holgate’s Senate inquiry

Four years of Women Write Wiki – Wikimedia Australia

Kerr, who is the Principal Solicitor of the Feminist Legal Clinic in Sydney, joined forces with technologist and general polymath Spider Redgold to apply for a grant to found a women’s Wikipedia editing group. Supported by Create NSW through the NSW Writers Centre (now Writing NSW) in 2017, the Women Write Wiki (WWW) group was born.

By March 2021, the group was celebrating four years of editing, activism and friendship, during which they estimate they’ve now created over 300 new pages on Australian and New Zealand women. Their efforts form part of growing international movements, such as Women in Red and Art+Feminism, whose work to increase the visibility and representation of women on Wikimedia platforms has seen the number of pages about women grow to nearly 19 per cent as of March 2021.[1]

This gender bias is perpetuated by the dominance of men on Wikipedia, which are estimated to make up as much as 90 per cent of editors,[2] yet another reason WWW was formed. The group has produced some of Australia’s most prolific Wikipedians such as Ann Reynolds and Margaret Donald who walked through the doors of the library and have been stalwarts of the group and Australian editing community ever since.

Source: Four years of Women Write Wiki – Wikimedia Australia

The UN, ILGA, Stonewall and the Women’s Caucus: Jo Bartosch investigates calls for the removal of laws prohibiting sex with or between adolescents – Lesbian and Gay News

In 2020, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, 200 NGOs signed a so-called ‘feminist declaration’ which calls for the removal of laws prohibiting sex with or between adolescents, the abolition of laws prohibiting of certain forms of violence against women and the full decriminalisation of prostitution.

The ‘feminist declaration’ was the work of the Women’s Caucus, a collection of organisations which lobby on the fringes of the UN. The declaration is hosted on the website of the New York based NGO, the International Women’s Health Commission (IWHC).  IWHC are described on their website as co-conveners of the Women’s Caucus. According to their most recent financial report, one of IWHC’s most generous donors is the Open Society Foundations (OSF) which gave in excess of $100,000 in 2018-19. OSF donate to many organisations which call for the full decriminalisation of the sex industry, and the replacement of sex-based rights with those based on gender identity.

Here, couched in the language of human rights, is a call for a reduction in the age of consent. The World Health Organisation define adolescence as occurring between the ages of 10-19. Furthermore, the phrase “sexual and reproductive services” ushers in the possibility of commercial sexual exploitation of adolescents in surrogacy and prostitution.

Elsewhere in the document there is a commitment to “replacing punitive laws with comprehensive social interventions” with regard to issues including “female genital mutilation, domestic and intimate partner violence, and child, early and forced marriage.” This would seem to be a call for decriminalisation of some the most pernicious forms of violence against women and children.

Interestingly, the UN has some qualms about the type organisations with which they will work. Those who promote what are in effect laws that could lead to the rape of children are welcomed into the fold. Whereas grassroots organisations which promote women’s sex-based rights are not to be tolerated.

On 26 March 2021 the WHRC were removed from the online space on the grounds that they had ‘disrupted discussion’ during an event and made ‘offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, physical appearance, political affiliation, age, race, national and/or ethnic origin, immigration status, language, religion, or indigeneity’. WHRC co-ordinator, Jo Brew, contests this;

“My only comment in chat during the whole event was that the opening meeting was inspiring” she said. “It is impossible for me to have done the things that they say that I have. Chat transcripts from conference events would confirm this.”

The story here extends far beyond lobby groups like ILGA and Stonewall. The Women’s Caucus document could legitimately be recognised as rolling-back every gain feminists have made over the past two hundred years. It is clear there are a host of organisations working at an international level to undermine basic human rights and moral boundaries.

Source: The UN, ILGA, Stonewall and the Women’s Caucus: Jo Bartosch investigates calls for the removal of laws prohibiting sex with or between adolescents – Lesbian and Gay News

Melbourne schools urged to stop saying ‘MUM or dad’ in a push to be more ‘gender inclusive’  | Daily Mail Online

  • Schools and sporting clubs are being urged not to use gender specific pronouns
  • Parents are being encouraged to use words like parent instead of mum or dad
  • It comes #SpeakingUpSpeaksVolumes campaign to raise awareness for LGBTQI+
  • Recommendations included: gender neutral bathrooms and flying rainbow flags

Source: Melbourne schools urged to stop saying ‘MUM or dad’ in a push to be more ‘gender inclusive’  | Daily Mail Online

The amendment threatening to derail the domestic abuse bill – Politics.co.uk

Parental alienation’s origins begin in the 1980s with a rogue psychiatrist named Richard Gardner. Gardner had an unusual obsession with child sexual abuse. He believed that there were certain natural sexual inclinations between adults and children, and that modern societies were engaged in unnecessary hysterics over paedophillia. In order to prevent fathers from facing any consequences for child sexual abuse, he invented a concept called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) to be used in courtrooms. His goal was to prevent accusations by mothers of child abuse by fathers from being believed.

The power of PA is that it seems like a reasonable concept; you can imagine scenarios where one parent acts to exclude another. Yet PA has instead become a smokescreen, a tactic to obfuscate custody hearings and garner sympathy from judges and custody evaluators who may have an instinctive suspicion towards women. Its objective is to make abusive men the victims and protective mothers the perpetrators. Although PA proponents use gender-neutral language, empirical studies have demonstrated that its impact is gender-specific.

Although there is an obvious grift taking place, the PA industry’s growth has also been due to its main philosophical driver. This is the belief that children require equal access to both parents for a healthy upbringing, and that this should take precedence over any violent behaviour. Once the court submits itself to this idea, any action a mother takes to protect her children from an abusive father is deemed an act of “alienation”. Women’s expected obligations are now not to her children’s welfare, but to facilitating contact with a father, regardless of his behaviour.

This is making it almost impossible for women to protect their children from men who they know are dangerous.

Including an amendment that would make PA a form of abuse itself will further entrench accusations of “alienation” as an instrument to manipulate the courts. The state will willingly allow itself to become a weapon that abusive men can use against their children and former partners. It will have fully submitted itself to this repugnant market.

Source: The amendment threatening to derail the domestic abuse bill – Politics.co.uk

Lesbians vs. Pedophiles: A Recent History

Forty years ago, lesbians booted pedos out of the gay rights movement. Is it time to do it again?

Last March, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (known as ILGA in its short form) co-sponsored a declaration which included a demand for the reform of laws which limit the “recognition” of an adolescent’s “agency” to consent to sex.* An “adolescent,” by international standards, is a youth of 10-19 years of age.

This declaration, and its stuffed-in mandate, flew relatively under the radar, with very few activists groups or media outlets catching the sneaky addition buried on page 5 among a host of other, more reasonable, demands.

This is not the first time the ILGA has pushed to expand access to minors for sex. In fact, the last time such a thing had happened was in the 1990s, and the ILGA was expelled from its consultative status with a UN body for having ties to NAMBLA – the North American Man-Boy Love Association. NAMBLA is the oldest organized “pedophile rights” group in the world.

ILGA formally removed NAMBLA from its membership in 1994 – a shame it still carries to this day, evidenced by the maintenance of a statement on its official website condemning NAMBLA and pedophilia.

But the damage of association, across so many gay rights groups, had long since been done.

How much of this damage could have been mitigated had the gay rights community just listened to the lesbians – the women activists who had been throwing up red flags as early as the 1970s?

With the renewed inclusion of the amendments about “sexual liberation” for minors in the new ILGA declaration, history appears to be repeating itself only 40 years later. And, once again, it will no doubt fall to the women, the lesbians, to right the ship.

Source: Lesbians vs. Pedophiles: A Recent History

When Sons Become Daughters: Parents of Transitioning Boys Speak Out on Their Own Suffering – Quillette

What follows is the introductory instalment of When Sons Become Daughters, a four-part Quillette series that explores how parents react when a son announces he wants to be a girl—and explains why so many of these mothers and fathers believe they can’t discuss their fears and concerns with their own children, therapists, doctors, friends, and relatives.

Putting aside general concerns about gender ideology, there are medical worries that pertain specifically to males. In particular, there’s insufficient evidence to determine the efficacy or safety of hormonal treatments prescribed to many young men in the United States. A Swedish study has pointed out the alarmingly poor outcomes for many MtF post-operative transsexuals, suggesting that surgery is far from the mental-health panacea it is often portrayed to be. Another study shows that 19.9 percent of those taking MtF hormones stopped mid-course. Compare this to the equivalent figure for FtM (female to male) hormone treatments, which is 6.6 percent. In the same study, 23 of the 117 MtF transsexuals failed to participate in the one- to four-year follow-up, almost one-fifth of the cohort. This is a figure that might well raise eyebrows: Four years is not a long amount of time to stay in touch with a research team, particularly given the highly invasive nature of the associated surgical procedures.

Source: When Sons Become Daughters: Parents of Transitioning Boys Speak Out on Their Own Suffering – Quillette